


Patchwork

by BambooTora



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: AU, Before the farm, Before the prison, Canon-Typical Violence, Daryl Dixon Being Daryl Dixon, Don't make me make you look at the flowers Rick, End of the World, F/M, Family, Family Dynamics, Flying by the seat of my pants, Gen, Horror, I have no idea where this is going, Logic, Minor Lori Grimes/Shane Walsh, Minor Original Character(s), Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Outline? What is an outline, Pre-Relationship, Psychological Trauma, Shane Being an Asshole, Slow Burn, To Be Edited, Zombie Apocalypse, alt season, look at the flowers Shane, no beta we die like men, no seriously slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23309548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BambooTora/pseuds/BambooTora
Summary: Hold on to what you can. Hold on to what you find. In the end, especially at the end, it's all about your people. Watching the four year old boy, who was never meant to be her son, skin a rabbit with his knife - Seeing the teen aged girl, who would have been a stranger, apply a poultice - Arguing with a stubborn country vet over security measures - Normal is a dryer setting.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24





	1. Ripple

_Disclaimer: I make no claims to the Walking Dead Universe. Robert Kirkman has all the shiny there. This is only my humble tribute._

Chapter 1: Ripple

_Paint It Black cover by Hidden Citizens_

Lisa sat on her patio steps, watching a thin blade of flame in the heap of glowing ash that took up her fire pit, waiting for her friend to finally spit out what was bothering her. A couple of empty cans of Mugshot IPA were scattered between them. “It’s getting late,” she commented. 

Carrie’s apartment complex was a block down the street, and she wouldn’t have normally worried - both of them had walked home from the other’s place any number of nights - but the blonde was acting twitchy. 

“JJ’s at Dalton’s and I don’t have to work tomorrow,” Carrie dismissed, tipping back the last of her beer.

‘But I do,’ Lisa thought. Behind them the low drone of the dryer continued.

Carrie dropped her empty can on the patio. It wobbled precariously and then fell over. “How’s your mom?” She wondered.

Lisa’s face involuntarily pinched, “The same. Everything’s finally squared away, mostly.” She toyed with the tab on her own empty beer. “She still won’t go to the grocery on her own or touch a computer. I had to go to the DMV with her Thursday to get new tags.”

“She married your dad at seventeen. He took care of everything. It’s got to be a hell of a shock,” Carrie sympathized.

True. And maybe it was mean, but in light of her mother’s meltdown she was grateful she’d been a daddy’s girl. 

For all of the, what Lisa was positive, were undiagnosed anxiety issues, her mother had something about her that was like chewing on tinfoil. She thought the woman could out stubborn and catastrophize anything. Her father, on the other hand, had been, at turns, gregarious and shrewd. He taught through experience while her mother told cautionary tales. Both of her parents could be, when defied, unforgiving and unsympathetic. Their response to her failed marriage had proven that.

Irrespective of their pitfalls, Lisa loved both her parents with the desperation of an isolated only child. She was incredibly grateful that before her father’s end, she’d had the opportunity to know him with adult eyes. The alternative could have been devastating. 

In the nine months from her dad’s initial diagnosis of cancer to the day she’d had to make the decision to take him off of life support, she had learned the deepest parts of herself. She was comforted to know that they weren’t the only parts of herself.

“Yeah.” Lisa brushed the criticism aside and scooted to fully face her friend. “I don’t want to talk about my adventures in parenting my parent. You’ve been unusually quiet and I’ve been patient. Unlike you, I have a shift tomorrow starting at nine. So, out with it.” 

Carrie pursed her lips and frowned. “Reggie messaged me today.”

Lisa felt her own face pull into a frown. “I thought he was supposed to call you as soon as he landed. Didn’t they send him to Colorado or something for a training exercise? He should have called you yesterday.”

“Not an exercise.” Carrie reached around behind her and pulled the last beer from the six pack. She popped the top, then held it between her knees while she grabbed her phone. “He sent me a video.” With a few swipes of her fingers she cued up the file and set it to play, angling the phone over so that Lisa could see it.

The video started normally enough, a handful of young people in combat gear riding in a heavily built vehicle. Whatever road they were on was rough, as evidenced by the jostling of the camera. There was some ribald chattering, and Lisa picked out Reggie’s voice in the mix. The vehicle came to a stop and the group disembarked onto the side of a dirt road. 

Below them was a sloping sightline to a small town. From the distance they were at it was easy to make out that there were less than a few dozen buildings in the proper. It looked like some idealistic mountain town.

Two pairs split off from the main group, each set containing someone armed with a sniper rifle. Lisa’s brow furrowed when the camera focused on another sniper who was setting up on the side of the road and taking aim at the town. 

“Where are they?” She wondered aloud.

From above where her head had dipped down to be closer to the screen, Carrie intoned flatly, “Silverton, Colorado.”

Lisa darted her disbelieving gaze toward Carrie before she latched back onto the screen.

The sniper still in frame pressed his eye to his scope and made a signal with his hand. Next to him, a woman lying belly first in the dirty and scrub of the roadside spoke into a radio. “This is Checkmate Six Romeo, we have positive contact.”

“Roger Checkmate Six Romeo. You have permission to engage,” a tinny voice from the other end of the radio confirmed.

Lisa felt her jaw go slack. The video looked disturbingly unlike any Reggie had sent them before. But that couldn’t be right. If it was an actual mission it would have been classified and they certainly wouldn’t be focusing on a civilian population. She was brought out her thoughts when the sniper started shooting. 

She flinched as first two, then six, then ten shots were fired toward the town. In between each shot the spotter called out information that was semi-audible. The camera panned around the side of the non-descript mountain two-track. One side, the side leading toward the town, was open meadow. Across the road was the start of a coniferous forest. Pine needles carpeted the ground beneath the bows in deep drifts.

The video continued, the person filming it spinning nervously. Then, from one revolution to the next, a far off cry of warning sounded. The person with the camera whipped around toward the disturbance only to catch a group of people crossing the road around fifty yards down. Small arms fire sounded and a few of the people fell to the dirt. Two men popped up from the underbrush, running back toward the stationary group and the transport.

  
The muzzle of a gun was brought into frame. “We’ve got Geeks,” Reggie’s voice shouted. It was then that Lisa realized the video she was watching must be from Reggie’s body camera. That just made things stranger, body cam footage should have been something Reggie didn’t have access to send.

The camera turned again and the picture refocused on three people emerging from the shadows of the forest. They shuffled toward the soldiers, moaning and looking, somehow, wrong. She couldn’t figure out what, exactly, made her think that.

Before she could ponder it further her friend’s brother opened fire on the people. Lisa’s hand jumped to cover her mouth. 

On screen, the bodies jerked as they were hit. But despite the firepower, they kept coming. Headshots eventually put them down, but more people emerged from the woodland. One woman, who was missing her entire left cheek down to the bone, got close enough that Reggie was forced to fend her off hand to hand before the call for retreat happened.

Once they were back in their vehicle and driving away one of the soldiers asked, “You get bit?” Lisa was so busy processing the trauma of seeing naked maxilla, that the distant thought - What kind of question was that? - barely registered. 

The body cam caught Reggie hastily wiping his hand on his pants before he replied, “Nah man, you?” Then the video abruptly ended, the replay arrow displaying on the thumbnail.

There was a silence between them as Carrie cleared the screen and tucked away her cell phone. She took a long swig from the beer. 

The abrupt return to her dimly lit backyard was like plunging face first into cold water. In shock, the first thing that came out of Lisa‘s mouth was “What the hell was that?” What followed were half formed exclamations and queries that culminated in, “That woman had half her face missing!”

“I don‘t know,” Carrie’s subdued statement broke Lisa from her ranting. “He sent me this four hours ago. I’ve tried calling him, but he won’t answer.” 

Lisa looked to her friend, hearing the way the end of the other woman’s statement sounded choked.

Carrie tipped her can back again and a chill spilled down Lisa‘s spine. “I didn’t tell you,” Carrie continued, “Mostly because I thought it was crazy, but before Reg left he told me that I needed to pay attention and that if anything seemed weird I should take JJ and get out.”

During the playing of the video the fire had died down to embers, but Lisa couldn’t bring herself to leave the steps to throw more wood on. She felt like if she left the patio something in the dark might grab her. “Weird like what?” She wondered quietly. “And get out where?”

A part of Lisa was already analyzing, comforting herself.

“Get out, like get away from people. Like the sick people showing up everywhere,” Carrie pointed out.

A scoff burst from Lisa‘s mouth. “It’s a bad flu season. I’ve spent most of my shifts for the past week filling scripts for it and I haven‘t seen anybody like…” She waved a hand toward the phone. “Whatever the hell that was.” 

It shook her that Reggie would be called out to - quarantine? - was that even the right word? - sick civilians. No. It wasn’t possible. They were a first world nation. Things like what were on Reggie’s video would be on the news. Only prepper’s got worked up like she was working herself up to. She needed to calm down. She needed to calm Carrie down.

“Maybe,“ the other woman demurred. “As for getting out - your mom hasn’t sold the cabin down by Griffin yet, has she?”

“No,” Lisa answered automatically. When the question registered she jerked her head to the side to study Carrie‘s face. The woman‘s jaw was clenched, her mouth turned down in a frown. “You cannot be serious.”

Hysteria around sick people was not unknown to her. Fairburn wasn‘t a small town, but it had only been two years before that the general populace had been convinced every sick person had SARS and they were all going to die. 

Her blonde friend spun the beer can in her hand. “All I know is that my brother was worried enough to warn me. He sent me a video I don‘t think the government would want me to see. And now he’s not answering his phone.” 

She placed the can behind her on the patio and clasped her hands in her lap before turning to face Lisa. “So I’m asking, once JJ comes back from his dad’s, if we can stay at your cabin for as long as we need to.”

Lisa crossed her arms, then dropped them to her sides in agitation. “You’ll lose your job,” she warned. “If you take more than a week you‘ll be back in court over JJ.”

“I don’t care,” Carrie shook her head, eyes focused out on the dark yard. “You saw the same thing I did. You know Reg. Do you have a better explanation?”

Lisa licked her lips, at a loss. She was tempted to say it was some sick joke. “You’re sure that video came from Reggie?”

Carrie nodded and Lisa was stuck. Reggie wouldn’t pull a prank like that and those bullets had been real. She’d seen the hole open up in one of the sick people’s foreheads. No one else would be able to get their hands on Reg’s phone without prying it out of his cold, dead, fingers. 

Outbreaks happened. Violent responses to sick people happened. But from the government? In the twenty first century? In America? 

Rubbing a hand across her face, Lisa had to concede that something beyond her ken was going on. 

……………………………….........................................................................

“Lili!’ The joyous voice caught her attention. 

Lisa paused next to the older model Subaru pulled up on the sidewalk in front of Carrie’s apartment. She shook her head. Her friend’s landlord would rain hell over the tire tracks. 

The debate over whether or not Carrie was overreacting carried on in the back of her mind.

Bending down, Lisa could just see JJ through the rear door window. The little boy within grinned out, a slightly turned front tooth making him look more mischievous than was warranted. “Hey Jumpin’ Jack,” she greeted. 

A sudden bustling to her left drew her eye as Carrie shoved another bag into the trunk of the car. 

“We going camping,” the three year old declared. 

Lisa reached forward, popping the door open and squatting down. “Camping? That sounds like fun.”

The little boy strained forward against his belt, dropping his open baggie of cheerio’s next to him. Lisa automatically reached in to grab the bag and zipped it closed. JJ followed the movements of her hands as she tucked the snack bag next to him and offered his tractor toy to him. 

“You comin’ with us?” He wondered, taking the toy and perching it on his thigh.

Lisa screwed her face up in exaggerated disagreement. “Not right now, but maybe in a little bit.” 

In truth she planned to corner her friend and talk some sense into her if she hadn’t come back by the following weekend. She’d scoured the internet on her phone while at work but found nothing like what she’d seen on the video.

A slam from behind them drew Lisa out of the car. Carrie brushed her hands on her pants and then adjusted the strap of her purse. 

Taking in the blonde‘s tense posture, Lisa wondered, “You’re really going to do this?”

Carrie’s knuckles whitened where they rested on her bag. “I’ve made up my mind. You won‘t talk me out of it.”

Blowing out an exasperated breath, she opened her mouth to argue anyway.

Carrie cut her off. “Give me a hug,” she demanded. Rolling her eyes, Lisa leaned into her friend, surprised by the grip the other woman engulfed her in. “You should come down.”

“I have to work,” Lisa protested.

“You have Wednesday off,” Carrie interrupted. “It’s not that far. Spend a day, bring your mom. How long has it been since you’ve been down there?”

“It’s been awhile,” Lisa admitted slowly. “The deer season before last,” she speculated. 

Pulling back, she rifled in her pocket, bringing out a clip of keys and handing them to the blonde. For a moment she distracted herself pointing out the keys to the cabin, the shed, and the two gates. “There’s toilet paper on the bookshelf by the kitchen for the outhouse. You’ll probably have to knock down some spider webs. Did you remember to pack water to prime the pump?”

Carrie nodded, taking the keys and fisting them in her hand hard enough that her knuckles went white. She glanced to them before looking back up and meeting Lisa‘s gaze. “I know you think I’m being crazy, just…be careful, yeah?” Her eyes danced back and forth between Lisa’s own.

“Yeah,” Lisa huffed wryly. “I can do that.” Dismissing the bubbling in her gut, she bent into the backseat of the car and gave JJ a hug. When she ducked out, she closed the door and he waved a cheerful goodbye. Lisa followed Carrie around to the front of her car. “Call me when you get in,” she ordered.

“Sure.” Carrie tucked herself down into the driver’s seat. She hesitated before closing the door, one shade of blue eyes meeting a different shade of blue. “Be careful. See you later, Lis.”

The front door of the Subaru thudded shut and the engine started. Lisa took a few steps back. A rear tire spun before gaining traction, then the vehicle lurched forward. First Carrie, and then JJ, vanished past her as the wagon bumped over the curb.

Lisa stood in the side yard of the apartment complex, next to a muddy rut, watching until her friend’s car turned at the light and vanished. 

……………………………….........................................................................

She was labeling the latest batch of prescriptions, and trying to avoid watching the minutes of her shift tick down, when there was a crash from the pharmacy counter. Lisa’s attention jerked toward the front in time to see a dark haired head duck down. 

Standing, she made her way around the partition, taking in the middle aged man who’d apparently dropped his basket into the display of cough drops, candy, and gum in front of the register. “Is everything alright?” She bent forward to pick up a bottle of peroxide that’d rolled toward her.

Blood shot eyes raised to hers and the man grimaced. “Sorry about that. My grip slipped.”

Lisa was startled for a moment by the man‘s appearance. She’d fielded all sorts of flu riddled people in the past but the man in front of her had an ominous yellow-grey complexion. Shaking herself out of it, she replied, “No problem. I can ring you up over here,” she gestured.

While the man made apologetic small talk Lisa scanned his purchases. Halfway through her gaze landed on the poorly wrapped and seeping wound on his forearm. He noticed and gave a little shrug, but didn’t comment.

Long after the man had taken his bags and headed for the front of the store, Lisa’s stomach continued to churn in unease.  
……………………………….........................................................................

Wednesday was supposed to be her day off but Big Jim had called her in. From her spot by the pharmacy drive thru window she watched convoys of humvees, and big, brick looking trucks, trundle down SR 29 toward Atlanta. 

“We’re closing down, Lis.” Big Jim called to her over the counter. 

She swiveled her head toward him, absently stuffing the latest prescription bag into the pick up bin. “It’s four o’clock. Pharmacy’s open till six,” she protested.

Jim rubbed a hand over his thinning hair. “A-yep,” he agreed. “But nobody else is coming in today.” Lisa blinked in surprise. “Angie and Tooter called off. The rest I can’t get hold of. We’ve been holding the building down all day, can’t keep it up.”

It had been a bitch manning the whole pharm counter by herself. Thankfully they hadn’t had a lot of customers. Her eyes roved over the plastic bins on the floor filled to overflowing with prescriptions. “Alright,” she sighed. “I’m on the schedule to open tomorrow. Are we still coming in?”

“Don’t think so.” He scuffed a shoe on the drab grey carpet. “I tried calling Dave, Mary, and even called up Mr. Colburn. Haven’t gotten anything but busy signals and voicemail.” Jim looked slightly guilty. “Things are…turning weird.” Her shoulders gave an atavistic jerk at the phrase. “I’m not coming in to run this place myself. You can show up if you want, I’ll give you my keys, but it might be better if you just stayed home. I couldn’t guarantee you wouldn’t be the only one here.”

Her eyes flashed back to the bins. She thought about the military trundling blithely through town and about snipers on hillsides. There was also the news bulletins to think about. They had been giving a run down of symptoms that, if experienced, required an immediate check in at one of the Red Cross stations that had been set up. Fairburn’s was at the high school.

Despite feeling Carrie was blowing things out of proportion, her friend’s actions had planted a sense of wariness within her. It was enough to stop her from volunteering. A selfish act, yes, but something she was grateful for after seeing the tall chain link fences that had been erected around the block the station occupied. And they were around the whole block - not just the high school. There were guards stationed at the entrances. They were armed.

“You know, I’ll take you up on that.” Paranoia made her hand itch for a weapon. “It’s just a bad time is all,” she lied. Big Jim shifted from foot to foot. “Some of these scripts need to be tossed anyway. I’ll do that for an hour or so while I’m waiting. If Dave or Mary don‘t show, I‘ll lock her back up. I can drop the keys off to you afterwards if you like.”

The older man grimaced. “Nah. The wife’s keen on checking on her parents in Greenville. We’re gonna take the kids, make a long weekend of it. If things blow over you can hand them back next Tuesday.” He shuffled uncomfortably again.

“Sure,” she nodded. In her mind she couldn’t stop hearing his emphasis on the word ‘if.’

Jim folded the key ring into her hand, balled her fingers around it and squeezed lightly. “Watch yourself, Lis. Somebody knocked over the Lightning Quick on Wiesner last night - heard it on the scanner. They threatened poor Claire McAvery with a pistol. But, well, you‘re a grown woman. Just, mind you don‘t get caught up in that if people start losing their heads.”

Lisa forced a tight smile, even as she felt increasingly shaky inside. A small part of her nagged at her dishonesty and wondered if they weren’t both only seeing the worst. “Okay. I got it. I’ll bring my piece with me.”

He gave a sharp jog of his chin and then headed toward the front of the store at a good clip. Before he got to the door she called out, “Drive safe.”

The man she’d worked with for two years paused to look back over his shoulder. “God bless you, Lis.” The doors wheezed open soundlessly and he stepped out into the parking lot.

“You too,“ she murmured to the empty shop. 

Her fingers uncurled and she stared at the set of tarnished keys there. The CVS in Fairburn would close early. Mary, the store manager, kept her employee ID number and password on a piece of paper tucked into the middle drawer of the office desk. It would be simple for Lisa to shut off the security cameras.

She tried not to label what she was about to do as looting.

……………………………….........................................................................

At a little before six in the morning it was still dark out. When Lisa rolled up on the CVS the store was shuttered and the parking lot empty, just the way she‘d left it the night before. A breath of relief left her nose.

She’d spent the night with a knot of anxiety gnawing through her stomach. Several times she‘d jerked awake, unable to find the cause.

Carrie had called her from the cabin Sunday evening, but hadn’t answered the phone since. In fact, her phone had stopped ringing and started going directly to voicemail. 

Eschewing a normal parking spot, Lisa pulled up right next to the store’s side door. When her feet hit the pavement she couldn‘t help scanning back over the lot. Black asphalt and yellow lines hemmed in by gray sidewalk strips - the abandoned parking lot seemed eerie. Pulling in a lungful of the cool morning air, her nose wrinkled when she caught the faint hint of road kill. She snuffled out a breath and moved to unlock the double doors.

Fifteen minutes after the store should have opened she couldn’t take it anymore. Lisa dragged a pallet jack full of water bottles out to the back of her Jeep before loading them in. Screw this.

……………………………….........................................................................

She hadn’t thought there would be practicalities involved in looting. Her Cherokee could only fit so much stuff.

After her father’s first surgery, when she’d spent the majority of three days in the hospital with him, she’d quit smoking. It wasn’t the first time she’d quit, but it was the first time she’d found something that prevented her from starting again. She took up hiking. After all, you couldn’t hike if you couldn’t breathe. By the time her father couldn’t drive anymore she’d been solo camping a dozen times. 

In those last few months, when her dad had been saying goodbye and she hadn’t wanted to recognize it, they’d gone through her kit multiple times. Her dad had greatly enjoyed spending the time during his chemo sessions watching videos on the best gear and cheap hacks for space saving - You don’t need waterproof stuff sacks or a bunch of specialty foot care, Li. You just need a compost bag and some duct tape.

And why was it only when her mother wouldn’t pick up the damn phone, and she was freaking out, that she remembered that little smile her mother wore when listening to them bicker?

She shunted the low level of terror away and crammed a box full of zip lock bags, trash bags, and tape into her front passenger seat. A crash from across the street shattered the early morning silence. 

Lisa immediately ducked down behind the open passenger door, peering through the window and trying to figure out what was going on. 

Sometime between her last two trips a smattering of vehicles had pulled into the gas station across the way. Someone from over there had just broken through the double doors at the front. There was the general sound of careless rummaging and some male swearing. A screeching of metal drew her attention to another man attempting to pry open the gate to the natural gas tanks. 

“Hey!” The shout came from behind her and made her heart skip in her chest. The bang of the gun going off, she swore, made her heart stop altogether. Lisa immediately collapsed to the ground, accidentally half rolling under the car, before the thud of a body falling nearby her drew her attention.

Lisa’s jaw shook with nerves as she took in the body of an elderly woman in a flowery pink nightgown only ten feet away from her. Rhythmic pounding on the asphalt drew close before a whip thin middle aged man appeared. He peered down at the body, then using the toe of his boot, flipped the old woman over.

A hand came up to cover her mouth as Lisa curled further in on herself and gagged. The man with the gun had shot the woman straight through the head and gore oozed onto the pavement. The noise she made drew the man’s attention.

“Hey, girlie. Hey.” He carefully held his hands out to the sides, gun pointed away from her. “It’s alright. I ain’t gonna hurt ya.”

Lisa’s mind picked up on more yelling and running footsteps coming from the direction of the gas station. “Travis!? Becca!?”

“I got it, Bill,” the thin man replied.

Peering toward the street, Lisa spied the man with the crow bar from the gas station and two others, armed with rifles. “She bit?” One of the men with a rifle demanded. Lisa’s eyes blew wide at the question, Reggie’s video flooding back to her.

“Nah,” the thin man denied.

The man who’d asked instantly moved the muzzle of his gun to point at her and Lisa froze. “You sure?”

“Cut that shit out, Ned.” A square, squat man, silver haired and in his sixties, grabbed the muzzle of Ned’s gun and shoved it away from aiming at her. Keeping the restraining hand on his compatriots gun he ducked down to address her, “Honey, it’s okay. You can come out.” 

Realizing she was still on the ground, and surrounded by people she didn’t know, Lisa scrambled to her feet. Her eyes darted to the unmoving form of the old woman, now lying face up in the parking lot. A thin trickle of blood ran toward the drain. Lisa couldn’t stop her face from screwing up in disgust.

“First time ya seen one?” The thin man asked.

Lisa’s gaze darted up to his. He had tired brown eyes, they were soft around the edges. “Yeah,” she answered, but her mind was back on what she’d seen in Reggie’s video.

“Dad?” A voice called from around the corner.

The thin man whipped around, holstering his weapon. “I thought I told you to stay in the car,” he half growled.

The boy, who Lisa would guess was around twelve, crossed his arms. Behind him a girl of eight or so peered out. “We heard you yelling.”

“I’m sorry, hun. They darted out before I could stop them,” a middle aged brunette, obviously their mother, excused.

Ignoring her, the man grouched, “That don’t mean you get out of the car. Go on.” He waved a free hand back toward their vehicle.

The mother curled a stern hand around both of the kids’ shoulders and led them away.

“You too. Go on back.” The thin man tipped his head toward the three near the road. “Go on. I got this handled. We don’t have a lot of time and we need that gas.”

“You sure?” Ned asked.

When the first man nodded the elder hustled the other two back across the road.

“You are a lucky bug, lady.” The original man glanced down at the old woman and shook his head. “I’m Travis.” He walked forward and offered his hand.

Lisa blinked in confusion and dully shook his hand. The whole situation had happened so fast she had no idea what to think of it. “Lisa,” she half grunted in return.

His lips twisted into a rueful smile. “That peach back there’s my wife, Becca. And those two reprobates who can’t follow directions are our kids.”

Right. Just a guy with his family. He probably wasn’t going to shoot her. Her attention drifted to the corpse again. 

From the edge of the lot a rattle sounded and Lisa looked up to see another person clawing against the eight foot high chain link. Travis sniffed in disgust. 

“Bec, you got them kids in the car?” He called.

“We’re tucked in, honey,” the brunette called back.

“Good, make sure they stay there this time.” Travis drifted toward the fence, jerking his chin to signal Lisa to follow. It was only as she trailed after him that she noticed she was trembling slightly. 

Before she got within a dozen steps of the fence Lisa’s head jerked to the side and she grunted in disgust. The smell of copper burned her nose and she could easily spy the great chunk missing from the man’s neck. She’d bet that shirt he wore hadn’t started out that particular shade of disturbing maroon-brown. That wound the man sported was non-survivable, yet he was still up walking around.

“Nasty, ain’t it?” Travis asked tightly. 

Lisa’s mouth puckered and she squinted at the man banging his hands against the fence. 

“You came awful close to havin’ that old girl over there take a bite out of you,” he chastised. He turned his strained brown eyes back on her and lowered his voice. “I vouched for you, so you tell me true. You’re not bit are you?” His hand flexed toward his gun.

“No,” Lisa jerked her head in a shake. “I ain’t been bit. Is that…is that how this, whatever it is, spreads? That’s not normal. That’s not how disease works. I mean rabies, but…” she trailed off, looking at the man on the other side of the fence as he tried to stick his fingers through to grab them. 

“Yeah. You get bit and if you don’t die right away then the fever burns you out. Saw my neighbor go that way.” He shook his head, as if to shake the memory away from him. “Not pretty.”

What was she seeing? The fever burned you out if you got infected, infection came from a bite. So, it was a sickness, but… Her gaze lingered on the exposed muscle in the neck of the man on the other side of the fence. The bite would have taken out his jugular. He should be dead. Her mind could not come up with a single plausible explanation for why that man was still walking around.

“What’re you doing out here if you‘ve never seen one of them before?” He gestured toward the man.

Lisa pulled her horrified stare from the fence to look back over at Travis. “I work here.” He eyed her carefully and Lisa felt a blush rise to her cheeks. “Thought it might be good to get some stuff.“ At his skeptical look Lisa felt her metaphorical feather’s ruffle. “I’m a pharmacist.” 

An evaluating look settled over his face, but for a moment, Lisa thought he looked vindicated. “Pharmacist,” he parroted in a distant tone. “Huh.”

……………………………….........................................................................

_Author’s note: I’m wrapped up in a Marvel universe fic and this is my stress relief. Updates will be sporadic and controlled by my inspiration depending on the response to this fic. Happy reading._


	2. Know Better

_Disclaimer: I make no claims to the Walking Dead Universe. Robert Kirkman is guarding that hoard like a dragon. This piece is only my frantic scribbling._

Chapter 2: Know Better

_Zombie cover by Damned Anthem_

The group of people she’d fallen in with were intense. Bill, the patriarch, was a former army ranger. He was Travis’ father. Travis was a government contractor, and former army himself. 

Ned was Bill‘s nephew. He was abrasive, but his wife Cathy was a sweetheart who couldn’t talk enough about their kids. They had three, but only the youngest son, fifteen, was with them. The boy was sulky and quiet, scowling, while his mother watched him like a hawk. 

The final man was Bill’s friend, Buck. He didn’t talk much either. His wife, Tessa, had a heart condition and that was where Lisa came in. 

She wasn’t exactly comfortable handing out medication without a doctor’s script, but they had the name and dosage of the one’s Tessa needed on an old bottle. 

When Lisa had let the lot of them in the CVS, they’d stripped it far more efficiently than she had. During that time Travis drug her aside and mentioned his wife’s anti-anxiety meds. She’d, thankfully, been able to source them as well. All the while Bill and Ned had circled the store like sharks.

When it came time to leave she exited to see Ned with her back hatch open and a gas can in his hands. “Jesus, girlie. You got enough stuff in here?”

“Not for this, I don’t think,” she huffed.

He pushed at a wrapped block of water bottles but didn’t create much space. “True, true.” He cast a sly side eye toward her. “Ya know, you got too much stuff and not enough space.” 

Her jaw tightened and she started to wonder if she should have pulled her piece from her center console before she pointed them to the right meds. 

“I’ll work you a trade,” he proposed. Lisa’s eyebrows rose. “I show you how we got the gas out that station,” he gestured, “And you give me this survival kit you put together.” Her eyes rested on the cobbled together box of basic first aide, weather protection, calorie dense food, and supplements. 

The box was almost the same size as the gas can and it made Lisa re-evaluate Ned. It was probably the most valuable thing in the whole vehicle and she’d put it together with the idea she might have to hoof it later. Her attention shifted to the gas station across the street and a smirk curved her lips. Knowledge was power, and if the world really was going to shit then gas was gold. She could put those kits together in her sleep and she could survive on less. “Deal.”

“Hey,” Ned called, drawing the attention of Buck and Bill. “I’ma take the lady over yonder and teach her some things.” 

No one noticed when Lisa maneuvered to her driver’s side door and pulled the sidearm from her consul, discreetly strapping it to her waist and covering the holster with her shirt. 

“Be nice, Ned,” Bill warned.

The pale, slightly pudgy man grinned. “I’m always nice.”

There were a few scoffs before Lisa met up with Ned and ventured across the street. 

Her attention swiveled, taking in the restaurant next door with the front window shattered - which she also hadn’t heard during her looting. Dear Lord, how many people, or groups of people, had she been oblivious to? Further down the street something, somewhere, seemed to be on fire, and for the first time she started paying attention to the occasional gunshot in the distance.

Ned must have seen her flinch because his face turned exasperated. “How the hell ya gonna make it if you ain’t payin attention to what’s around you?”

Lisa grimaced.

“Yeah, my cousin saved your pretty ass from being chow back there. Ya might wanna learn from it,” he derided. Their feet hit the sidewalk in front of the station. “Bet you didn’t even think to bring a weapon.”

Scanning the man’s slightly scruffy face she replied, “Oh, I did.”

“Where ya got it?” He wondered.

“Not telling ya,” Lisa deadpanned.

Ned gave a high whining laugh. “There ya go, pretty. Best to watch your own ass. And you best watch it,” he warned. The mirth lining his eyes abruptly vanished. “This is gonna bring out all the nasties.” Lisa followed the quick flick of his gaze back toward the circle of vehicles in the parking lot of the CVS. With a jerk of his head Ned came back to himself, jutting his jaw toward the gas station. “Come on now.”

……………………………….........................................................................

Lisa cranked the socket wrench, feeling like she wasn’t actually moving the bolt head underneath. She drew the tool away, examining it.

“What’s the problem, ain‘t got the arm muscle?” Ned leaned in. Seeing the socket he scoffed, pulling the tool out of her hand before tossing it away. It pinged on the cement and rolled to rest next to a pump.

“Hey!” Lisa protested.

With a swift thrust and yank he removed a wrench from the back pocket of his jeans and slapped it into her palm. “Cheap tools are shit tools, and shit tools don’t always work, sweetheart.”

Lisa made a face but put the wrench to work.

……………………………….........................................................................

Gagging, Lisa spit a mouthful of gas onto the pavement. She had the presence of mind to put her mouth back on the hose and suck another nasty mouthful before spitting it out and hastily moving the hose into the can. 

“You know, what you did was pretty stupid,” Ned commented.

Lisa was too busy trying to clear her mouth and nose of gas fumes to retort.

“Telling people you know medicine.” From the corner of her vision she saw his face screw up in disgust. “Hell, you already have it hard enough. You’re a woman. Do you have any notion in that head of yours how dangerous things are?”

“I’m a pharmacist, not a doctor,” she protested, aware of the way she was fudging the truth and thinking that Ned would approve.

“And ain’t that a shit thing for you,” the man commented. “Not that it’ll save you much hassle in the long run.”

……………………………….........................................................................

The can was full and Lisa felt a swell of accomplishment as she pinched off the tubing and pulled it up. In the future she’d be able to siphon gas, from station or tank. Glancing up, she caught Ned looking across the street again.

“You should have a look-see through the station here. There’s more things than gas. You ever think of barter?” He needled.

Her mind flipped through the few things she knew about illicit markets in prison‘s that she‘d seen on TV. “Like cigarettes?” She wondered. A skeptical part of her recoiled at the idea the world would get to that point. Civilization couldn’t be defeated that easily, could it?

Ned’s eyes narrowed at her in annoyance and Lisa tried to wipe the half amused look off her face. “Yeah, or chocolate, lighters, batteries. Hell, everybody turns their nose up at the bootlegger or the granny knitting a blanket until they can’t go to the local Wal-Mart.”

Lisa made a noise of consideration as her eyes drifted toward the broken in doors of the gas station. When she stepped inside she had no idea it would be the last time that she’d see Ned alive.

……………………………….........................................................................

She circled the spot her Jeep had been parked in. It didn’t make her vehicle magically reappear. God, she’d been incredibly, unimaginably, stupid. And she was going to kick herself all the way home - if she made it home.

He’d all but told her, warned her.

All the stuff she’d spent two days stealing, her cell phone, her wallet, her god damn house keys, gone. She should have known that group was too good to be true, taking the ignorant woman under their wing and protection. All they’d been after was her stuff. That was probably why Travis was even in the CVS parking lot to begin with. Her medical knowledge had been a bonus. The possibility of her having it was probably why Travis hadn‘t just let her be Geek food in the first place.

Someone, and she’d bet money it was probably Ned, had left her the survival kit and a container of gas in the parking lot. If it was meant to be a kind gesture she was taking it more as a slap in the face. She should have known his friendly suggestion to check out the gas station was a ruse. It was probably his softball way of getting out of killing her. 

The snarling to her left increased in volume and Lisa was forced to make a decision; She could either stay the night in the CVS or walk the three miles home. Three miles of dangerous suburbia with only eight shots in her gun. And she wasn’t stupid enough not to notice that the first Geek had shown up after that group had rolled through making a shit ton of noise. 

Survival of the fittest was the new rule, and it was what Ned had been trying to tell her all along. They’d played her and she could almost commend them for how well they‘d done it. Who says no to vulnerable kids? 

What she couldn’t forgive them for, wouldn’t, was taking away her means of getting to those she loved. She promised herself if she ever saw any of them again she’d make them pay for it.

Her gaze briefly ghosted over the doors to the CVS. Well screw them. If the disease was as widespread as was suggested then staying in a building in a populated area was a death trap. She knew damn well that group had cleared the business of everything useful. After all, she’d walked out of the gas station with nothing but a single five hour energy that had rolled under the counter and a handful of lighters. Home it was.

……………………………….........................................................................

She jogged down the sidewalk, afraid that if she was in the street she’d get hit, and aware that the fences between yards would slow her down. She still risked a few of them to cut blocks. 

It seemed that in a handful of hours the town had gone from mostly living, to mostly - whatever they were. Reality was coming to her fast and ugly. There could be no more excuses.

Fortunately it appeared if you could avoid being cornered, and move at a brisk pace, the Geeks would get distracted by slower prey. She cringed at the screams but hesitated to pop off her last shot. Within the first mile she’d become positive noise drew them.

At one point she’d ducked into a church to lose a largish group. That had been a mistake that had cost her four bullets and was sure to leave her nightmares later, if she made it. 

Halfway home she passed through an intersection obscured by low hanging smoke. A breeze ripped around her, clearing the air enough for her to notice the house one down from the corner was on fire. For a moment her attention was fully fixed on the flames licking out of the windows and the group of people shuffling towards them in a stiff gait. Movement in her peripheral vision had her pulling a half stutter step, half leap, that threw her clear of a set of grasping hands. When met with the charred face of the thing she’d narrowly avoided, she’d screamed involuntarily.

Lisa had sprinted after that, choking on smoke and her own panic.

A block from her house, she could see it she was that close, she ran into a group of twenty Geeks. Some were bent down tearing at something on a lawn. Some were staggering around, clogging up the street. Glancing around for a weapon she found a crumpled road sign that had been knocked down by an accident. The car that had done the damage was lodged against a small maple, the driver’s arms waving out the window uncoordinatedly. 

Reaching down to pick up the long, green, post, Lisa found it was heavier than she expected. She shuffled her grip until the bent end was out in front of her but close enough she felt she could put some power behind it. Dancing out into the middle of the street, Lisa rushed between the grabbing hands, jamming the sign into the chest of a man she recognized as a neighbor. She ended up dropping it only a few paces into her charge, but it made enough of a hole for her to get through. 

When she reached her driveway she hurriedly shut a gate she hadn’t closed in five years. The fencing around her property was chain link, and only four feet high. None of the things had followed her, thankfully, but she knew her time was limited.

……………………………….........................................................................

She broke into her own house with an old clinic ID she’d found in the filing cabinet in her garage. Lisa had limited herself to five minutes to gather things, and with the power still on she’d timed it. 

Once everything was strapped down she paused to look at her only source of transportation. It was a bike, a ten speed bike, with a basket and rack, for cute around town trips. It didn’t look as cute with everything she could stuff on it covered in a tarp, secured with twine and bungee cords. 

A bitter snort escaped her as she shrugged her shoulders, trying to free the sticky material of her shirt from her back. Chances were she looked as ragged as the bike. The ‘screw it’ invective from that morning had morphed into a ‘fuck them’ mentality. She hoped the bastards who’d left her for dead busted a tie rod end at speed. God, she wished she’d grabbed her mom and left with Carrie and JJ. 

The bike was going to set her back. It’d been four hours since Lisa had originally planned to head to her mother’s. With her cell phone gone she couldn’t even call the woman.

Unwilling to lose her shit further, Lisa toed the kickstand up and wheeled the bike out of the garage. She still needed to get out to a main road.

……………………………….........................................................................

Two hours later she made it to her mother’s countryside home, but it was empty. That was not to say that she couldn’t tell what had happened. After all, there was a very specific spot between the house and the barn that Lisa was very firmly not thinking about. She would not think about the scruffy maroon colored grass, or the pieces…Nope. 

The teenaged son of her mother’s neighbor snarled and patted his flakey, maroon painted hands unsteadily on the door that opened onto the front porch. 

……………………………….........................................................................

Three days later, when she finished shoving her bike into the back of her mother’s Patriot, there was a brand new wooden cross in the yard. The shovel she’d used to put it there lay next to the unmoving body of the kid from next door. She hadn’t bothered to bury him.

Lisa was self aware enough to know that something in her had broken.

Cell phone networks were down, so even though she had her mother’s phone she couldn’t call Carrie. Not that she was likely to remember her friend’s number from memory anyway. And Jesus when did that happen? She’d grown up memorizing a dozen different phone numbers.

Lisa turned the key in the ignition, glancing at the gas gauge and seeing it almost full. Her attention drifted to the passenger seat where her father’s 30-30, twelve gauge, and 30-06 rested with their accompanying ammo boxes. They’d been waiting for her inside the front door. Her fingers slid along her hips, feeling the make-shift holsters for multiple kitchen knives and the bump of her properly holstered, and reloaded, pistol. Behind her bags of food, medical odds and ends, and clothing rested. 

How long ago had it been that she’d griped to Carrie about parenting her parent? 

The wound she’d stitched closed had reopened to make room for her Mother, but there wasn’t time to grieve. A small part of her wondered if it wasn’t better that they weren’t around to see how things were.

From across the road two shambling Geeks were making their way towards her, drawn by the sound of the engine.

Her attention caught on the two, full, rosy red gas cans in the back before she backed the car around and head toward Griffin.

……………………………….........................................................................

She was threading her way between Fayetteville and Peachtree when she spotted her Jeep. It was parked in the back of a Marathon gas station on 54, surrounded by the vehicles she‘d vaguely catalogued from her run in with Travis‘ group. If she’d chosen Flat Creek road instead of Tyrone she’d never have seen them and that might have been worse.

Inching toward the intersection she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. There was a dark pile near the rear wall of the store that took her precious moments to realize were bodies. The station itself seemed abandoned.

Her fingers twitched on the steering wheel, caution urging her to simply drive away. Instead her foot eased off the gas and her speed dropped further. She turned into the lot, trundling around until the front bumper of the Patriot pointed back toward the road. She pulled the keys from the vehicle and tucked them in her pocket.

Easing the door open, her feet crunched down onto the gravel of the rear lot. She immediately pulled her gun with her right hand and a long bladed carving knife with her left. Pausing, she listened. Birds chirped, the dull drone of insects was broken up by frogs in the ditch. From further off she thought she heard the low hum she’d come to associate with a large group of Geeks. 

She tip toed in a mincing jog toward the row of cars, cursing herself for the need to investigate. 

The doors on the truck and SUV hung open and she darted a quick peek inside. They looked like they’d been rifled through, though the truck had a stain on the passenger headrest, something bloody, lumpy, and only partially dry. She covered her mouth with the back of her knife hand.

Her attention drifted to the pile of bodies by the wall, mind unwillingly putting the pieces together and distantly wondering which poor soul had been riding shotgun. Against the grip of her gun her palm started sweating. Who was at the bottom of the heap was impossible to figure out without digging, which she was not going to do. However, the body on top was obviously a child with long brunette hair. She looked about eight. The wind shifted bringing an evil smell to her senses at the same time her ears registered the buzz of flies.

Gagging, she stumbled away. She ducked around her Jeep, putting it between her and the grisly scene and hunching against its side. She whipped her head back and forth, scanning the lot for others in sudden fear. Geeks hadn’t shot Travis’ family. 

A scratch of footsteps came from where she’d parked the Patriot and Lisa stiffened. She strained to pick out sound over the high whine of insects. There was a muffled thud, a slipping, dragging noise, then more steps. They were uneven and she felt her pulse pick up at the guess there was a Geek between her and her vehicle.

Peering around the hood of the Jeep, Lisa’s eyes widened. She clamped down on her instinctual urge to rush to assist the naked female. Given a moment to catch up, her brain catalogued the shuffling gate, the listless way the torso leaned. Shock froze her in a half crouch by the front tire as Travis’ wife - dead, she had to be dead with that wound to her throat - slowly turned toward her. 

Lisa wasn’t sure if her foot had slid in the gravel, or if she’d made some sort of involuntary noise, but the woman homed in on her and lurched forward. She scuttled backwards, only to hear a raspy breath from behind her. 

Idiot, she cursed herself, turning to look over her shoulder to see the thick form of Bill trundling toward her. He had a large, peppered looking wound to his stomach that she realized was probably a shot gun blast. His arms waved at her, fingers grasping and tangling on her right shirt sleeve. Lisa pulled back, shoulder bumping into the Jeep and unable to raise the arm with the gun.

Up close the smell of decay was as overwhelming as his cloudy eyes. Her mind blanked in horror as Bill leaned his snapping mouth toward her face. Without conscious thought her left arm brought the blade in her hand up in defense and thrust it forward toward his face. There was a messy, popping squelch, as the blade sank into his orbital socket and then Bill dropped to the ground. Her hand reflexively released the blade, allowing the corpse to take it down with him.

She stared for a moment before memory kicked back in and she realized there was another Geek likely closing on her from behind. She shuffled around Bill’s body, bending down to pull the knife from his eye with her face scrunched in disgust. When she turned toward the front of the Jeep, Becca was rounding the hood. 

Lisa’s entire body jittered in horror. She didn’t need to speculate on the bruises or the nakedness. The long, crusted, slash along the other woman’s throat was far more concerning. It was confirmation. These people weren’t sick, they were dead. 

With that thought in mind Lisa jouked around the woman, bringing the bloodied knife up to slam through the thin bone at the temple. With a crunch and some resistance the body dropped. Disgusted by the weapon, Lisa was tempted to drop it. Instead, practicality won out and she turned away from the battered dead woman to wipe the blade on Bill’s clothing. 

It wasn’t until long after she left that cursed place that her callous actions fully sank in. She almost crashed the vehicle when she broke down into a shuttering, sobbing mess.

……………………………….........................................................................

She pulled far off the road that evening and spent more than an hour cutting kudzu free in a fear driven attempt to camouflage the Patriot. Unwilling to start a fire, but surprised by her appetite, Lisa snacked on cheese, crackers, and jerky. She broke into one of the flats of water she scavenged from the Jeep, sipping as she gazed warily passed the front seats out an uncovered gap in the windshield.

There were people like Travis’ family out there, who would steal your stuff and leave you for dead. Then, there were people like whoever had killed Travis’ family out there. They would take what they wanted, brutalize you, and then kill you. There were undead, things, out there, probably a lot of them, maybe thousands, maybe millions. She shuttered.

She was alone. Her mother was dead. Carrie and JJ were probably dead. Going to the cabin in Griffin was probably an exercise in futility. 

The last of the faint blue light faded from the horizon. She leaned against the door, eyes closing unwillingly in exhaustion. 

She had to be sure.

……………………………….........................................................................

It was overkill. She told herself that repeatedly as she snuck through the woods on the backside of the cabin. Yet, despite the temperature she had changed into the long sleeved camo shirt she used for hunting and she had stopped by the creek bank to wipe mud over her face. The 30-30 swung from her shoulder. Lisa already knew it was a last resort.

The smell of wood smoke floated in the air, which let her know someone was residing in the building, but didn’t tell her if they were friend or foe. Close to the top of the hill she slid to her knees and crawled toward the rise.

Positioning herself in a thicket of brush, Lisa brought the scope up and peered toward the house. A fire was going in the pit outside and Carrie’s Subaru was parked out front. Hope surged through her before her ears snagged on distant male voices. 

The door banged open and a young man, through the scope he looked late teens, went to tend whatever was cooking over the fire. The repetitive sound of a maul drew her attention to a thin copse of dogwood on the far side of the drive. It took a moment of adjusting, and some discreet shuffling, to make out the much older man chopping wood. Neither of the people were familiar, both were making far too much noise. 

She watched the group for another hour, counting three other men, a girl around the first boys age, and finally an older woman who came out to pump water. Lisa’s entire body froze when she recognized the little boy who followed the woman out as JJ. 

……………………………….........................................................................

She’d been surviving in the woods for two days before she noticed a change in the men. They became more wary, scanned their surroundings more. Lisa had no doubts they had caught on to her presence. In her efforts to ascertain JJ’s situation she had wandered close to the camp each night. Even though she was careful, with no light to double check, no matter how paranoid she was about leaving footprints, she had to have left some sign.

Lisa spent the third and fourth day up in a hastily built tree blind. It was uncomfortable. She could smell herself. And when she had to relieve herself it meant venturing off for several yards. She was leaving a mess of trails. That wasn’t to mention the three Geeks she’d killed and hastily covered with forest detritus. 

Getting caught was only a matter of time.

……………………………….........................................................................

“Don’t move.”

Flashbacks of the parking lot played in her mind and her fingers twitched. 

“Turn around, slowly. Then use your right hand to drop the gun.” It was a male voice, deep, a little husky.

Lisa felt adrenaline knock through her system, fear followed it. She’d been watching these people for a week. It didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with them, but she had been mistaken before. JJ seemed in good health, good spirits even. She’d seen him laughing with the two teenagers and even playing tag. There was a difference between a young boy and a fully grown woman, however.

Her mind spun with plans of action. The rifle was too unwieldy to swing around quickly, but her pistol was fully loaded and in the holster on her belt. She turned slowly, telegraphing her movements toward the strap over her shoulder. With a slow shrug, the sling of the rifle fell into her palm. She slowly bent and placed it on the ground.

The man across from her had grey in his beard and just peppering his hair. Early forties? His shoulders were broad and the .22 he held wavered.

“You’ve been around here for awhile,” he accused.

Straightening she answered, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“You’re at my cabin.” The answer was true, but didn’t tell the real reason. It did seem to catch the other man out however. He shifted slightly. The muzzle of his gun lowering a notch.

“Sorry.” Social niceties and boundaries still seemed intact in him. “We just found a good place to lay in and…well the world‘s gone to hell.” He trailed off with a shrug. 

“It has,” Lisa agreed. Her jaw tightened. “That little boy you have with you, he had a mother.” The man’s gun lowered further. “What did you do with her?” Lisa accused.

He looked offended. “Nothing,” the man denied. “I mean, when the time came,” he offered lamely.

Lisa‘s fingers inched toward her pistol and the other man stiffened. “What does that mean?”

“She was bit.” His eyes ran over Lisa’s figure. 

She knew she probably looked rough and threatening. It was a comfort she never thought she’d need. She wondered if any of the desperation she felt shown through. 

“If you knew her then you knew her family,” he tested.

“I‘m her family,” Lisa answered. “Me and her son, who you have.”

“And the others?” He prodded.

Lisa jerked her head in denial. “No others.” After a moment of consideration she tacked on. “Dalton? His father. She might have mentioned him.”

The man propped the gun on his shoulder, posture relaxing even as his eyes skirted over her belt of knives. “I think you should come with me.” Whatever look she granted him with must have seemed aggressive as he held up a hand. “I don’t know what made you twitchy about people. But it’s just me and my family. We don’t mean any harm,” he tried to reassure, hunching in on himself to seem smaller.

Lisa squinted at him, feeling dried mud flake at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Alright,” he agreed easily. “What would help?”

His patient tone made her shoulders slump. Realistically nothing but being around the group would help. She took comfort that JJ hadn’t displayed anything but the body language of a child who felt safe. 

“JJ,” she decided. He was three years old. If he was scared of the people he was with, when faced with her, he would show it. “I wanna talk to JJ.”

“We can do that.” He gave a faint chagrined grimace. “Though my husband is gonna want to watch.”

Tipping her chin back Lisa challenged, “From the steps.”

……………………………….........................................................................

“Lili!”

The sound of that name in his voice broke an almost inhuman noise from her mouth. She dropped to her knees, arms out to catch the speeding ball of a child too young to understand what was going on around him.

He was happy, healthy. He was alive. 

“I’m so glad to see you Jumpin Jack.” She tried to keep her fingers from digging into his small back.

The faces of the family across from her instantly softened.

……………………………….........................................................................

“Can you tell me how it happened?” Lisa greedily scraped the last of the beans off her plate. It wasn’t like she had been hungry that long, but it was amazing what even perceived scarcity could do to a person.

The man who had confronted her in the woods, Chuck, looked over at the man she’d seen with the maul earlier.

Maul-guy, Jeremy, cleared his throat. “Laura and I are from Griffin. She’s dispatch for the county so we had a little advance warning. My brother came down and we thought, there’s a lot of vacation and hunting cabins in the area…” He waved a hand and then let it fall back onto his slight belly. “We just picked one with an overgrown trail.” 

Lisa nodded in understanding. It was something her mother had fretted over. The place had been her father’s pride. The thought of it being overgrown had warred with her mother’s unwillingness to visit it as a widow. 

“That little girl greeted us at the last gate with a rifle,” Jeremy recalled with admiration. His face abruptly shifted into a sorrowful frown. “She already had the fever.” 

Hugh, Chuck’s partner piped in, “The mite there said a bad man hurt his mama at the grocery.”

They all swiveled their attention to where Chuck and Hugh’s son, Brad, and Jeremy and Laura’s daughter, Jenny, were distracting JJ.

“So she knew?” The question trailed off. At the sympathetic looks from around the campfire Lisa force herself to continue. “She knew what was happening to her?”

“Downright bossy, that girl was,” Chuck confirmed. “When,” he hesitated, “When she knew she wouldn’t make it, she asked us to call her sister, you.” He gave an apologetic wince. “It rang through to voicemail.”

Lisa carefully set her plastic spoon down on her plate. From the timeline that would have been Thursday. “My car was stolen, phone was in it,” she excused.

In her mind she couldn’t help but to kick a dead man. Lisa rolled her shoulders, trying to physically remove the regret and anger clinging to her. Her eyes tracked again to where JJ was breaking sticks with the two teens at the base of the hillside. 

“It’s an odd thing to say, what with this being your land,” Laura ventured, “But you’re welcome to stay.”

Lisa’s shoulders hunched forward, the paper plate tilting precariously in her hand. The offer was more than tempting. If she had been on her own she never would have approached anyone after seeing what happened to Travis and his family. JJ put a new spin on things. She wasn’t alone. And while she’d given up on the idea of children after her divorce, Jack deserved the best chance of survival, everything she could give him. 

Her eyes traced the group gathered around the fire. “I’d like that.” 

……………………………….........................................................................


	3. Sandy Ground

_Disclaimer: I make no claims to the Walking Dead universe. Robert Kirkman sits atop that golden egg. This is only my dream induced musings._

Chapter 3: Sandy Ground

_Wayfaring Stranger by Jack White_

A tugging on her blanket woke her. For an instant, her hand groped for the knife hidden under her pillow, before the dim light through the windows illuminated the small shape. 

“JJ?” Lisa slurred. 

Her entire body protested the midnight wake up call. They’d raided a greenhouse the day before. Hauling flats of wilted plants, forty pound bags of dirt and fertilizer, on top of taking out stray Geeks, or Dead Heads as the group called them, had tapped her out.

The young boy tugged again at her blanket. “I have to pee,” JJ confessed. 

A gargantuan yawn stretched her jaw and she shook her head. Flipping the blanket off herself, she rolled over. Her feet slid unerringly into her unlaced boots. “Okay.” 

Snagging the small battery power headlamp, she pressed it into his palm. When he went for the button she stopped him. “Remember the rules,” she chided.

“Not before I’m in the potty,” he parroted.

“Right.” Lisa wiped a hand over her eyes before reaching out to tuck her pistol into the back of her sleep pants.

……………………………….........................................................................

“What are you doing?” Laura asked, watching JJ flit along the side of the hill.

The little boy was too far away to hear the question, so Lisa answered. “Playing monkey or fox.”

The older woman twisted her neck to give Lisa an incredulous look. “What?”

“He’s little,” Lisa shrugged. “His best bet is to hide. So,” she waved a hand, “Tree top or undergrowth, monkey or fox.”

……………………………….........................................................................

“Why are they mean?”

Lisa tugged her blade, a bowie she’d found in town, from the head of the downed Geek. Behind her on the ground her fishing pole rested, line still cast in the creek. She turned to look at the boy who had become hers, searching for a way to explain. “I don’t know.” She bit her lip, feeling inadequate.

“Are they all mean?” JJ hadn’t shifted much in his position, secure in the knowledge she would protect him. The line on his pole trailed lazily away from him, threatening to become tangled in a bush.

“Yes,” Lisa answered. Feeling the need to try to make him understand further, she did a last check of the area before squatting to his level. “You know the difference between them and regular people, don’t you?”

“They’re dead,” he announced definitively, something he had obviously heard around camp. 

Lisa paused, momentarily unsure how to handle the statement. “Yes,” she conceded, unwilling to lie. Feeling like she was an awful person who was ruining his childhood, she pushed forward. “How do you know they‘re commin‘?”

A thinking expression settled on his face. “They groan sometimes. They shuffle lots. They smell.” In a quieter voice he confessed, “The look like monsters.”

Lisa closed her eyes in a slow blink. They were monsters, especially to a boy who was still a month away from four. “And what should you do?”

“Run away,” he answered promptly. “Never touch. Hide. Yell for you.” 

The last made her heart clench. It was a world shift for her. Every action she took had to be weighed against whether or not she’d make it back for JJ. There was so much more he needed to know. So much more she needed to teach him, teach herself. 

“That’s real good,” she praised. “You got it just right.”

His small face lit up in a smile and he tugged upward on his line, unaware of how it’d been let out too far and was floating limply atop the water. Lisa reached around him, gently reeling it back to an appropriate tension. As she did the pole dipped once, then twice. She could feel the weight tugging at the other end.

Despite the dead body lying feet from them, the two planted their boots in the peat on the edge of the bank, swept up in the excitement of bagging a potential dinner.

Arms wrapped around the young boy, she helped him bring the fish to land. 

As she showed JJ how to work the hook out she remembered her dad doing much the same for her, long, long ago. Glancing over her shoulder to smile in pride at her mom, Lisa was abruptly reminded that the elder woman wasn’t there.

……………………………….........................................................................

“Hugh says the path from the quarry is getting choked up again.”

The mid afternoon sun temporarily blinded her as she backed out of the small smokehouse Brad had built. She hoisted the trash bag, with the skin of the deer she’d shot that morning inside, up on her shoulders. “That’s unsettling. Too many for the guts to distract?”

Jeremy nodded, following her over to the rack with the previous deer skin de-haired and stretched across it. Nearby, still within her sight, JJ practiced building small shelters. 

Lisa dropped her bag onto the ground, reaching in to pull out a Ziploc bag containing a grey organ. Jeremy’s nose wrinkled in revulsion when she dropped the brain into a large pail with a bit of warm water and began grinding it up with her hands. 

“He counted thirty nine,” he offered, looking away toward the forest edge.

Lisa stopped the rubbing motion of her hands, sloshing a bit of fluid onto the blanket beneath her. “That’s almost triple what we had after the storm.”

“Yeah.” He shuffled in discomfort. 

Pursing her lips, she resumed her task. “We could pull Brad and Jenny off watching creek side.” 

He grunted in negation. “They had to call me down to help them today. Those damn things are getting washed down from somewhere up stream, keep getting caught up on the sandbar. And I’m still running across a good dozen tangled in the perimeter wire.”

“JJ,“ she called. The young boy bounced up from his bed of boughs and she immediately made a scolding noise. Looking sheepish, he tucked his tiny buck knife safely into it’s holster before moving a step further. 

Sharp away, he crossed to her side to help her unhook the hide from the rack. Lisa turned back to the man beside her. “So we’re getting slammed from all sides. Suggestions?”

She dismissed his uncertain glance toward JJ. The whole camp was uncomfortable with a four year old having a knife but Lisa wouldn’t budge, no matter how much of a failure it made her feel. 

JJ’s tiny hands squeezed out the hide, and she reached in beside him to help fold it in a different direction before he plunged it back in the bucket. At the slopping sound Jeremy’s mouth curled in disgust. Her own lips twitched as the slimy bits of tissue stuck to her knuckles.

“We can’t stay here without seriously upgrading our security.” Jeremy cracked his neck. 

Huffing a tired sigh out her nose, she acknowledged, “We can’t pull everyone off duty to up the fences either.” JJ tilted his head back, watching the two adults as he swished the skin around in the pail. “What if we dropped a few firecrackers in the quarry with a full carcass, then spent that day running new lines for fencing?”

“Stop gap at best,” Jeremy critiqued. His dull fingernails scratched at the uneven growth of his beard. “They’re moving out of the towns. We need to dig out a ditch for the creek on top of laying down some pikes and wire just to make it ’till fall.”

“You get that from that medieval fortifications book, Jer?” A dark roll of humor rode her voice. 

“And you mocked me for hitting up the library,” he teased. “Especially after,” he waved a hand to her bucket, “That.”

“You’ll all be grateful for our tolerance of brain slurry come winter.” She motioned for JJ to leave the hide, flinging her hands out to the left and tucking away a smile when the young boy copied her. Cupping his hands in her own, she directed them to a container of slightly scummy used wash water. 

“What if we put Laura on making pikes?” She posited. “It keeps her at the cabin. After we can rotate who pounds them in. Maybe circle a line around the valley before spreading back out.” 

“You want us to cut our safe area in half?”

“To a third,” she corrected, proffering a rag to JJ. Once the boy had wiped his hands she prodded him to use the tiny bottle of hand sanitizer on his belt. 

Jeremy shot her a skeptical look and she gave a fatalistic shrug. “There’s eight of us, some bigger than others,” she hinted. “If the borders are being pressed the way you say then we can’t hold them. Better to fall back to a safe zone then lose everything.”

The older man‘s mouth slid sideways in displeasure. “Yeah, maybe.”

……………………………….........................................................................

Lisa focused, trying not to think about Reggie’s video as she aimed the gun, tipped with an improvised silencer, at the Geek’s gathered on the quarry path. 

A louder bang, from the camp, threatened to unsettle her further. She pushed through. Laura, Jenny, and JJ were in the tree blind on the hill. Even if they were shooting they were safe, so long as the rest of them made it back. Out of ammo for the 30-06 she switched to the 30-30. No further shots came from camp.

……………………………….........................................................................

“What was that?” Chuck demanded upon entering the clearing around the cabin.

There was only one Geek, already headed, laying between the pump and the fire pit.

Jenny stood at the base of the tree blind, the first one down, clutching the shotgun to her chest. “I’m sorry. He was so close and he kept walking toward us. We threw rocks but he just kept coming.”

“Sweetie, you were up in the tree,” Hugh reminded. 

“I know. I’m sorry, but you took my silencer. I‘m used to having it,” she rambled.

Brad had become quite speedy at making suppression devices from PVC and cotton. But he hadn’t built one to fit Hugh’s shotgun, which was the same barrel size as Jenny’s. They’d been caught out when Chuck had alerted them that the group of Dead Heads trapped in the sand pit had started moving in their direction as one. It’d been like a mob.

“Alright, it’s okay,” Hugh soothed. 

JJ swung down the makeshift ladder holding a sharpened branch that was taller than him. He sidled up to Lisa before beckoning her down to whisper, “I was quiet.” She opened her mouth to praise him before he continued, “I was Tarzan.” He waved the stick.

“That’s great.“ A smile curved her lips and she shuffled the butts of the rifles on her back before hugging him. “That was exactly what you were supposed to do. Good job.”

He squinted at her with knowing eyes. “You gonna camp out?”

A pang went through her, remembering a time that seemed so long ago when he had asked if she was going with him and his mother. She wondered how Carrie would feel about how she was raising her son. “Yep,” she answered, brushing the doubts aside. 

The world was about survival. Maybe it always had been. JJ’s survival was her responsibility. How she screwed him up would only show if he lived long enough. 

“You wanna stay with me?”

He hummed in agreement. “Can we have M&M’s?”

Trust a kid to want to break into the stash of candy she’d pilfered from town. Her gaze drifted back to the dead Geek in the yard and she couldn’t help but wondered if it was okay for him to brush such things off in favor of chocolate.

……………………………….........................................................................

The sound of breaking glass jerked her awake. Curled into her side, she felt JJ restlessly stir from the noise. A shout came from inside the cabin, but it only registered dimly. Lisa’s sleepy mind was too busy trying to catalogue the shadowy mass surrounding the house. A flashlight from the loft flicked on, a terrible idea, but it briefly shined out the window illuminating the origin of the noise.

Her entire body shuddered and, almost as if it was possessed, her left hand smacked roughly over JJ’s mouth. Lisa swallowed her own sound of terror. 

They hadn’t cleared the perimeter since that morning. They hadn’t cleared the creek all day. They’d been too busy with the quarry trail. 

Surrounding the cabin, on the two sides she could see, at least thirty Geeks clawed against the walls. One of them had managed to smash the living room window. Hugh, who’d been on watch, was probably already dead.

Shouts and shots came from inside the building and they jerked Lisa into motion. She rolled to her knees and looked at JJ. “You stay here.” If she died, he’d die. “You don’t move for nothing,” she commanded. 

The little boy clutched at her shirt. “No, no, no,” he chanted lowly. 

“JJ,” she scolded. The young boy plastered himself to her waist. A holler of pain came from inside and she brought her rifle up over his head, fitting the stock into her shoulder. Taking aim through the scope, she shot the Geek closest to the broken window. She suspected at least one had made it inside and attacked. 

Swiveling to take another shot she continued trying to reason with a four year old. “Baby, I have to help them. JJ, you gotta to let go!”

“No, no, no, no,” he continued chanting.

Lisa continued shooting and the people inside fought as well. A groan sounded and her mouth dropped open in horror as the porch roof collapsed with a ripping crack. Several Geeks became distracted by the commotion. 

The gun in her hand gave off a hollow click and Lisa dropped a hand to dig through her pockets. Out of ammo. She pulled her pistol from her belt, but from the distance, in the dark, it would be a waste. The twelve gauge was inside and the 30-06 had been exhausted at the quarry.

“No, no, no,” JJ’s voice was rising into a high whine but had yet to draw attention over the screaming. 

Lisa snapped. “JJ!” The four year old fell silent and whipped his head up. She felt heartless when she forcefully pried his fingers from her shirt. “You will stay here,” she ordered. As soon as she was clear from his attempted grab she swung her legs over the platform. 

He reached for her, hanging half over the edge, fingers barely missing her hair. “Lili, no. Lili. Lili!”

She felt like the biggest bitch in the world when she barked back at him to stay quiet and he looked at her like he’d never see her again, eyes wet and nose already running.

God keep her safe. Her eyes scanned the base of the tree. She could be so wrong. Yes, the family in the cabin had become her friends, but was what she was doing right? Her feet hit the ground with a muffled thud, but the group of Geeks were too focused on the house to notice. 

She skirted the tree line and sprinted across the open area between her and the pine at the back of the place. What if she got bit? What if she outright died? How long would JJ stay in that blind?

Two Geeks had made it behind the cabin and she stabbed both in the head. Ripping the screen aside on the bedroom window, she pulled on the glass, it didn’t open. She grunted in frustration before swinging the butt of her rifle up at speed. The glass shattered.

The inside of the place was lit only by a dropped flashlight visible through the open bedroom door. Laura was in the room and when she saw Lisa she screamed.

“Out, out, come on, get out.” Lisa waved her toward the window frantically. She immediately pulled away, shoving her back to the wall and scanning for Geeks. There was a rough noise from the window, and as Laura came tumbling out Lisa stabbed another approaching Geek in the head. “Go, blind, go.” She shoved Laura’s shoulder.

“Jer,” she moaned.

“Go. I got it.” 

When no one else approached the window from the inside, Lisa checked inside and out and then hoisted herself through. Her stomach scraped against the bottom of the sill. Inside the shots had died down but there were grunts. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. It was probably bad.

Rolling across the carpet, she lunged toward the doorway. Her hands came up to grip the frame, checking her momentum and almost causing her to stab herself in the shoulder. 

Someone had shoved a couch against the broken window, but it made very little of an obstacle. There were bodies slumped over it from both sides. Brad was hanging half off the ladder, turned around and firing, and someone was being eaten in the kitchen. The gurgling scream was male.

“Get down here,” Lisa ordered, switching to her pistol and popping off into the crowd.

Brad jumped the last four steps then positioned himself to keep shooting. Jenny came down the ladder behind him. 

The cacophony of questions and shouts were too much to parse though. Lisa hustled both the teens toward the doors. She saw Jenny make it through before something snagged her ankle. 

Looking down she saw a dead woman bring her teeth down on her boot. Lisa yelled and shot her on reflex. Grateful in the aftermath that she hadn’t shot herself in the foot. Kicking free of the corpse, she saw Jenny go out the window. 

Brad went next, but halfway through a scabrous hand wrapped around the side of his face. Lisa had a moment to see the white all the way around his eyes before a mouth came down over his ear. In one biting, twisting motion a great hunk of skin came free. The scream he let out was high pitched and terrified. Answering screams came from outside. Another set of hands grabbed him and Lisa watched him be dragged backwards out the window.

The other window in the bedroom shattered and she abruptly changed course. Going out the back was no longer viable. Snarling came from the living room and she could think of only one chance to get out, up. She catapulted herself through the door, shooting a Geek that got too close, before lunging up the ladder. From the loft above there was only one window. Her dad had built the cabin with high ceilings. It was a twelve or thirteen foot drop.

From around her there was a resounding crack and the house itself shuddered. How many people did it take to knock down a building?

She slid the window open, looking down at the ground. The base of the cabin was surrounded. There were maybe twenty on her side alone. She couldn’t see Laura or Jenny and hoped that meant they’d run for the tree stand.

Placing a booted foot on the window ledge, Lisa tried to judge the distance to the pine tree. It was large, thick enough to maybe break her fall. Another crack came from the front of the house and part of the front wall collapsed. The main beam holding the rafters popped and the whole roof squealed alarmingly. She could either try to jump or wait in the loft for the Geeks to take the place down.

Peering below her she rattled off a half dozen shots, reloaded, holstered her knife, and leapt.

Her head turned to the side and eyes squeezed closed involuntarily. Her arms slammed against limbs, her chest and hips breaking branches under her momentum before her core hit the trunk. Her teeth rattled with the impact and she slipped, legs flailing and hand grasping for purchase. Brushing off the wrench in her shoulder, she twisted, bring the pistol down to fire again. 

Seven feet from the ground she swung around the trunk and pushed off, hitting the dirt and rolling. There was a tug on the back of her shirt and Lisa lashed out, smacking the thing with the pistol still clutched in her hand. Something wet and cold coated her knuckles before she was back up and running. 

A smash from behind her barely registered before she was hauling her ass back up the ladder to the blind.

……………………………….........................................................................

In the morning light she took stock. Brad and Laura were dead in the yard. Jenny was basically catatonic next to her. JJ was still clinging to her leg. Hugh, Chuck, and Jeremy were nowhere to be found. They were probably still inside the half collapsed cabin. One fingernail was missing entirely from her left hand. Whenever she frowned, a ragged slash at the corner of her eye wept. She’d come dangerously close to being blinded. Another branch had gouged just under the right side of her ribs and the wound was only just clotting. 

She only had her pistol left and it had one round. There were at least ten Geeks clawing at the bottom of their tree. 

Shaking, she fumbled through the pack she and JJ had brought up the evening before. Retrieving a half full water bottle, she pressed it into JJ’s hands.

……………………………….........................................................................

Three days of silence, of having to forgo any semblance of embarrassment to take care of basic bodily functions, of whisper soft shushing and apologies - that was how long before the last Geek wandered off. 

She and Jenny were coated in splatters of gore. A layer of sap and pine needles topped hers except for where she‘d doused her wounds in grain alcohol. 

JJ was furious with her in a quiet way that resulted in him refusing to look at her. Jenny was unhealthily pale. Every now and then, when the breeze was right, a stink would wash over them that had nothing to do with their own hygiene. 

……………………………….........................................................................

Lisa brought the salvaged shotgun up, eying the three Geeks trapped in the sandbar. It was late morning on the fourth day after the disaster. Jenny was finally talking, mostly to JJ, who still refused to acknowledge Lisa. Lowering the gun, unwilling to waste the ammo even with one of Brad’s makeshift silencers attached to the barrel, she glared. 

Stomping forward she ripped her stained top off, dragging it through the current and using it as a rag to clean herself. Slowly, Jenny joined her. JJ plopped himself on the bank, gathering a handful of pebbles and periodically throwing them at the Dead Heads.

“Stop,” Lisa tiredly reprimanded.

The boy tossed a handful at once in defiance.

Lisa rolled her jaw and scrubbed roughly at her arms. She had no idea what to say to soothe him. Carrie would be so much better at it.

……………………………….........................................................................

By mid afternoon the bodies from inside the wreck of the cabin had been buried next to Brad and Laura. They’d found Hugh further out, where he’d been overwhelmed while on watch. Lisa had wrapped what remained of him in a length of burlap before dragging him back to his own grave.

Afterward she had ducked into the ruins again long enough to pull the keys to the Patriot out and send Jenny and JJ to wait inside. JJ had opted for sitting on the ground next to the open back hatch in a continuing show of disobedience.

Lisa was going to have to find a way to stop that. He’d end up being contrary when he shouldn’t and someone would end up dead for it. 

As a compromise she set him and Jenny to brining the fish they’d caught. The smoke house was miraculously intact, so Lisa was able to grab the leftover pork and an untouched grouse from within. 

What was left of the main building was a mess of gore and unmoved Geek remains. She gathered what she could, sliding spare rounds into her pistol with reverent fingers. Part of her wanted to burn the place down in anger and despair, but that would only result in a wildfire. Evening came upon them swiftly, and though none of them were happy with it, the tree blind remained the safest place.

“Where should we go?” Jenny wondered. At sixteen she was fifteen years younger than Lisa.

The only adult left, Lisa found there was no magical knowledge granted. She had no answers. “I don’t know.”

……………………………….........................................................................

The second day they were on the road JJ wandered further than he was supposed to when he went to pee. Lisa knew she had to deal with the issue then. They were planning to hit up a vending supply warehouse that afternoon and there was no one left to watch him. For all that she had tried to teach him, she had still been sheltering him. 

When he came back Jenny was securely in the vehicle and Lisa was waiting with her arms crossed. “You know what you did,” she accused. He looked mulish. She was shit at dealing with a four year old in situations a four year old shouldn’t have to deal with. 

“I don’t want you to be mad at me,” she admitted. “But it doesn’t matter how mad you are. The rules are there for a reason.”

“You don’t follow them,” he shot back. 

A part of her wanted to chuckle at the image of indignation. She was being shaken down by a pre-schooler. “What rule did I break?”

“You left me!” He’d gotten much better at keeping his voice down but it didn’t stop his accusation from being a subdued howl.

Leaning in she reminded him, “Not leaving you was not a rule.” It was harsh, but their world was harsh.

JJ’s mouth opened and closed. He looked completely betrayed. “Then,” his face went red, “Then you just go now.”

“I could do that,” she agreed, “But then what would you eat?”

“Berries,” he retorted, “And candy!” His lips pressed out in a pout. 

“Okay. How do you know which berries are safe to eat?” She wondered. “What about when it’s winter and they’re aren’t any?” She shrugged. “Where are you going to get more candy when you eat it all?”

“There’s stores,” he announced haughtily. “You got stuff from stores. You just went in. It‘s not stealing.”

He hadn’t been with her when they’d gone to the town, but he’d definitely heard about it. 

A remnant of her civilized conditioning wanted to tell him stealing was wrong. Instead she pointed out, “Those stores have Geeks in them sometimes. Sometimes we had to break the window with a really heavy rock,” she informed. “You can’t lift those rocks. Do you think you could get through Geeks?”

That was a dangerous question, and it was only in hindsight that she realized she could have made a mistake that actually pushed him further into danger in a effort to prove himself capable.

The four year old proved he had more sense than she did. “Well, no,” he admitted, “But Jenny could.”

“Even Jenny would have problems with them. And you would be alone while she did it,” Lisa reminded.

Not giving him time to work up another argument Lisa crouched down. “You’re angry with me because you were scared that I could die. That was very true.”

JJ sniffed.

“I’m sorry for making you scared and you can be mad at me for that. That’s okay. I promise to always do my best to come back to you. I don’t want to leave you.“ She shook her head. “But sometimes I will have to do things that are dangerous.”

The look on his face said he didn’t like that one bit.

Lisa plowed forward. “It is okay for you to be scared. And it is okay for you to be mad. What is not okay is you breaking the rules just because you’re mad at me.”

She braced her hands against her legs, wondering if she should offer a compromise and outline rules that she had to follow too. In the end, despite the tears running down his face, she thought it was better not to. She had no idea how to explain flexibility, and extenuating circumstances, and flat out being a hypocrite, to a child. 

“I love you. I don’t ever want to see you hurt. The rules I give you are to keep you safe, to keep us safe. You may not think anything bad will happen if you break them just a little. But what would have happened if I had seen you’d gone too far and went looking for you?” She tilted her head to the side and paused, inviting him to think about it. “I might have missed you comin’ back. Hollerin’ for each other isn’t safe. Would you have gone looking for me? Then we’re both lost in the woods and Jenny would be all alone.”

He wiped his nose on his sleeve and Lisa fought not to grimace. “Fine,” he huffed out petulantly. “I won’t break rules.” She nodded, moving to stand when he interrupted her, “But why?”

Confused, she settled back on her haunches. Momentarily distracted, she did a quick audio visual sweep of their surroundings.

“Why did you go? I didn’t want you to,” he clarified.

Lisa chewed on the inside of her lip, trying to find a way to explain. “I know. But if I hadn’t gone Jenny wouldn’t be with us,” she reminded.

The young boy’s eyes swept over to the car, landing on the teenager who was watching their surroundings closer than Lisa was. 

“They were our friends and they needed help.” God, she wished she could have done better, saved more of them, been faster. “We have to be careful when we help people.” Thinking of the gas station on Tyrone and the CVS she added, “Especially people we don’t know. But we should always try to help our friends.”

“Mom said friends and family are important,” he agreed grudgingly. 

“They are,” Lisa granted. “You’re mom and I were best friends.”

For a moment his face dropped in confusion. “You were best friends with your sister?”

Lisa couldn’t stop the reflexive chuckle from escaping her. “We were not sisters.” She couldn’t explain sister from another mister to a kid. The fact that Carrie had repeated the sentiment often enough to make JJ believe they were actual sisters brought up a swell of grief she still hadn’t dealt with. 

“You’re not my aunt.” He sounded scandalized.

“Honorary,” she informed.

“What’s that mean?” He wondered.

With a wistful smile, Lisa explained, “Sometimes if you’re really lucky your friends can become you family. Me and your mom started off friends, but we became family and I became you‘re Aunt.” At his wide eyed look she continued, “Some friends are special like that. They‘re the most special.”

……………………………….........................................................................

The dairy was a sad little place. There was a coop with chickens that looked to have once been double in number. However, with low food, some had pecked others to death. There was a solitary cow left - the one closest to the water trough entrance, and had thus been licking up all the tiny bits of wetness provided by the near defunct windmill pump. 

Upon inspecting the area, Lisa found the farmer turned Geek out in the surrounding field. A closer look revealed a hastily constructed wire fence hemming him, and him alone, in. His wife had been trapped in the house, but she hadn‘t been dead long. A jagged mouth shaped wound stood out on her baggy grey arm. The farmer had died considerably earlier.

The entire place reeked, but it was getting dark. Forgoing the house, the three of them set up in the top of one of the barns. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the only building that didn’t have dead animals, or people, in it.

Shoving aside a bale of hay, Lisa peered down at the ladder speculatively. 

“We could cut out the bottom four or so rungs,” Jenny offered.

Sniffing, Lisa considered it. It would mean JJ would always need help down, but that wasn’t really a con. She spied an ax hanging on the wall, letting a noise of decision escape her.

“Not a bad idea.” She shuffled over to the ladder. “Get him set up will you? We can decide whether we want to stay here in the morning.”

……………………………….........................................................................

A week later she came across footprints. That was not unusual in itself. However, the trail was fresh and deep, the gait measured. Her eyes tracked them into the underbrush, easily picking out the passage of a heavy man. 

Shrugging her shoulders to alleviate the stickiness of her shirt, Lisa considered her options. She had a bow - one she’d found in the garage that first night and had been practicing with every since. She also had her loaded pistol and a handful of knives - those things had become staples. 

She could go the opposite direction of the man, who still seemed to be alive, or was at the time of his prints. Or, she could brave yet another human interaction. Third times the charm, perhaps?


End file.
